TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 8160 SUBJECT: SGR 0501+4516: Detection of possible optical counterpart DATE: 08/08/29 11:49:38 GMT FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astro. de Andalucia T. Fatkhullin (SAO-RAS Nizhnij Arkhyz), A. de Ugarte Postigo (ESO Santiago), A. J. Castro-Tirado, J. Gorosabel and M. Jelínek (IAA-CSIC Granada), V. Sokolov (SAO-RAS), S. Guziy (Nikolaev State Univ.), A. Pozanenko (IKI-RAS Moscow), E. Sonbas (Cukurova Univ.) and D. Pérez-Ramírez (U. Leicester), on behalf of a larger collaboration, report: "Continuing with our monitoring campaign of the field of the SGR 0501+4516 (Holland et al. GCNC 8112, Barthelmy et al. GCNC 8113) we have used the 6.0m BTA telescope (equipped with SCORPIO) at the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO, Russia). A combination of exposures adding a total of 1530s in the I-band obtained at a mean epoch of August 25.18468 UT shows a low S/N source consistent with the NIR object reported by Tanvir and Varrycatt (GCN 8126), with a magnitude of I = 23.3 ± 0.4. Taking into account the nIR magnitude reported by Rea et al. at about the same epoch (GCNC 8159), we derive an apparent color index (I-Ks) = 4.1 ± 0.6, uncorrected for Galactic extinction in the line of sight to the source. Further observations are planned." This message can be quoted.